Death at Tangiwai: a class affair

The vast majority of those killed at Tangiwai came from the second-class carriages – 148 out of 151. Second-class carriages were always located at the front of the train and were more affected by the noise, smoke, coal dust and fumes of the locomotive, something those in first class paid to avoid. In a head-on collision or derailment second-class passengers were also at greater risk of death or injury. This was the case at Tangiwai, where only 28 of the more than 170 second-class passengers survived. Only one first-class passenger was lost. Most of the passengers in the final three (first-class) carriages, which remained on the track, initially did not even know what had happened to their train.

The Tangiwai disaster was especially tragic for the Nicholls and Benton families, who each lost five family members, and the Fitzgeralds, who lost four. Amidst the death and carnage, though, there were some good-luck stories.

Seventeen-year-old Barbara Mahy and her younger brother John had first-class tickets but could only find seats in a second-class carriage. After leaving Waiouru the guard found them seats in the last of the first-class carriages, at the rear of the train. Almost all of the occupants of their original carriage were killed. Christine Cole Catley and her three small children had been booked to travel second-class that evening but due to a change of work plans travelled a day earlier. She has wondered ever since who ‘were the people who considered themselves lucky’ to get these tickets at the last moment?

The Tangiwai tragedy killed more people than the combined total of all of the other rail accidents in New Zealand history. It is worth noting, too, that in 1953 road accidents in New Zealand claimed 279 lives.